The Biblical creation myth is a subversive retelling of competing creation myths (such as Enuma Elish, the epic of Gilgamesh and Atrahasis) that is meant to invalidate the worldview of the surrounding culture and emphasize the beliefs and worldview of the Hebrews and their god. It has nothing to do with science at all. The Bible doesn't claim a literal 6 day creation, or any account of the actual creation of the world at all for that matter. The argument over the meaning of "day" is completely irrelevant.

Well it actually is a mistranslation. I'm not a christian but that's just how it is. I'm not saying they have an accurate time period but the bible does not actually state the universe was created in 7 days.

Bullcrap, it does say 6 days. The original Jewish and Christian "Gensis" story, as written in Biblical Hebrew, counts literal days. It's not an error in translation, that's the way it was written. The word "yom" is used to mean day in the text. No other word was used. Yom means day any way you slice it.

Granted, King James was translated from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English. Many things were mistranslated; this is not one of those things.

Actually, many people use science like a religion. They BELIEVE in science, and hold on to ideas even as more and more data forms against those ideas. The current theory of gravity for instance, only works if we assume the universe is 84% invisible stuff, only detectable because gravity says it should be there. That right there is faith.

What you're describing is Thomas S. Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions." Yes, people hold onto the previous paradigm in the face of new evidence, but if the new evidence reaches a crisis point, the old paradigm is eventually abandoned and a new, more completely explanatory paradigm is adopted in its place. Using science like a religion? I don't know what that even means, but if you mean that some people use science to understand the world, just as others use religion as a way to understand the world, then I suppose you're correct. The key difference is that science is open to and in fact relies upon shifts and changes in "truth," where religion is closed to and in fact hinges upon the Truth always remaining the same.

Except 'days' has a literal meaning in regards to the time it takes the rotation of the earth. While apologists try and use the whole 'relativity, so God's days are billions of years, blah blah blah' you still have the issue that no block of time (aka 'God days') would correspond to the genesis days of creation of light, earth, animal, then man, or whatever (not to mention to two contradictory accounts of genesis).

The worst part is how that apologist view basically makes God the worst author or all time. An author is supposed to know their audience and anticipate how they will interpret a phrase in order to communicate properly. What horrible author makes the mistake of saying days when they meant to convey to an audience that experiences it through eons?

Maybe if they only write children's books. Those who create cannot demand only one specific interpretation of their work/s. Each viewer's thoughts about a creator's work/s is influenced by the experiences, prejudices and upbringing of that viewer. A creator's job is over once they have finished.
Unless they are George Lucas.

(I'm using the term 'creator' here somewhat ironically, and to make sure any one who makes, thinks, builds, writes, paint, etc, something is included.)

The man: "God, how long is a million years?"
God: "To me, it's about a minute."
The man: "God, how much is a million dollars?"
God: "To me it's a penny."
The man: "God, may I have a penny?"
God: "Wait a minute."

Its interesting that if you divide that amount of time by 7, take that amount and add it forward into time, life on earth won't possibly be able to exist. Its almost scientific, like you'd spent a lot of time setting up an experiment, relax and let it run for a day, see your results, then destroy your experiment a day later.

This has always been something that has bothered me. In my studies of the bible, this topic to be exact, a day does not necessarily mean 24 hours as we've come to know. A day in the supposed 'creation' of this universe could very well mean 1000 years! I'm not attacking Atheism nor defending Christianity. There's always two sides to every coin (situation).

Aside from your cynicism, that is the argument, yes. Your perception of a year is a completion of an orbit around the sun.

Which only exists if you remove the 3rd dimension of travel through space. The earth really moves in a corkscrew through space, only returning to a common position due to the other bodies hurtling through space with it.

Ancient people totally loved the number 7. Probably because at night they would be intrigued by the fact that only 7 "stars" wandered in the sky (I mean: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.)

Question: Is 'yom' used elsewhere in the Bible? What meaning does it hold there? From a cursory Googling, it appears that 'yom' has the meaning of 'day', not "a period of time", though that could be context speaking and not literal translation.

A day refers to a period of time. Anyone who studies astronomy know the meaning of day refers to the completion of a rotary cycle, such as the length of a day is different between even the individual planets of our own solar system, then there are the planets where a day may never see its completion as the planet is in a tidal lock with it's solar companion.

Your first point is incorrect. It's not translated as a literal 24-hour day. The planet earth isn't even created until the third day/age so it doesn't even make sense to believe they're 24-hour days at all.

Correct. The word yom is used which can refer to anything from a specific period of time (24 hours) to an indefinite period of time (age). Most people believe the text refers to a single earth-day which makes no sense at all, especially since planet earth isn't even formed until the third day/age.

I'm not sure what point you're attempting to make here. I believe the creation myth does hold up to scientific scrutiny of our modern era, but people would rather misinterpret the text than understand its allegorical meaning.

You can make an argument that it can be interpreted figuratively and loosely enough to fit what we have discovered through science, but to say that Genesis can stand up to direct scientific scrutiny is a bit ridiculous.

For one, you can't get around that pesky notion that God created man in his own image and then showed him all the animals so that he could name them and look for a helper (this was before woman was formed mind you). So that throws evolution out of the mix completely.

That's just one way to interpret genesis, and I don't believe the whole bible is meant to be taken literally. Yes I believe it can be interpreted loosely enough to fit within current scientific models, especially for being an ancient creation myth.

As for the story of Adam and Eve, that is also allegorical and there are hidden meanings throughout.

I really get sick of all the "you know this won't change anyone's mind" bullshit that gets thrown around in efforts to disparage posts like this.

1) Even assuming it's true, it doesn't matter. It's meant to be amusing to other atheists. What your argument boils down to is "I disagree with your sense of humor, so stop making jokes I don't find funny." Downvote and move on; stop perpetuating the "/r/atheism is a circlejerk" circlejerk.

2) How the fuck do you know what can and can't change other people's minds? You don't think a simple image like this can change some people's minds? This could be the first picture someone ever sees of the universe's expansion. It could be the first time someone imagined it dimensionally rather than abstractly, and led them to think "That's not what science people really believe, is it?" and look it up, and learn.

Sure that's not going to be everyone, or even most people. But to posit that every religious person is too "close minded" to change their views from something like this shows a startling lack of experience with fellow atheists: most of the nonbelievers I know, including myself, started out religious and asked one question too many or were presented with one fact too many that tipped us on the sliding slop toward agnosticism/atheism.

So stop being as arrogant and condescending as you claim /r/atheism is. You're not elevating the discussion by injecting your own bias.

That's actually a good question! However the point for me was that it was interesting and I learned something from it. I wasn't converted from any pretendism or anything but I still enjoyed looking at it and learning just how long it took for stuff to form. Cosmology is delicious like a caesar salad with bacon bits.

For creationists, this type of argument doesn't really do anything. Creationists believe God created time, so it was in his power to create things at any point of their existence.

Pointing this sort of thing out to creationists is based on the assumption that if God created the world, it had to of been "brand new" in every respect. This simply is not an assumption for most creationists.

After reading about quantum mechanics, string theory and general theory of relativity there's one scenario that this could possibly happen, as well as the rest of the bible's odd time lines.
One thing that is stated is that time and space are relative. They are effected by things like gravity. At the time of the big bang, time and space were created, they expanded at an exponential rate, to what we know now. Now think about "time" during the time of the big bang, is all relative. Things that may seemed like they were "billions of years" could of just been seconds... all relative. All this stuff in string theory about "Branes" as well, what if there are beings on one of these other "branes" that can see into our brane watching this all happen, and being in another time and space dimension... has anyone else read about this stuff? Could this all exist? Even Stephen Hawking states several times in A Brief History of Time, that there could be a higher being that set this all in motion... examples are always give of us 3-D creatures, looking upon a 2-D world... what if there are 4-D or higher creatures looking down at us in this 3-D world?
Coherent questions? or ramblings of an ent?

You know that this will not change anyone's mind. If you factor in an all powerful god then it is completely reasonable for him to create all this in 6 days with back story and all. Is it still bat shit insane... yes, but when an all powerful god is included in your calculations they can become very fucked up and still come out right. (god is like that stupid constant 'c' that I had to add to my equations in calculus)

I know. I was just making a bit of a joke that I thought atheists might enjoy. The OP titled in the form of a question posed to people who people who think the universe was created in 6 days, so I answered in the same vein.

Dude, seriously... the original (or earliest known text) biblical text saying "6 days" was written in a language where days meant 'periods of time'
Imagine an old man saying "back in my day ... " as he tells stories about how things used to be when he was younger. The original text of the bible was referring to 6 "periods of time" and then the 7th being a day of rest, and it was only referring to the formation of the earth. The confusion comes in when the bible was inaccurately translated into English and the English language not having a word that could accurately describe the full meaning.
Everything in this universe has laws and an order, that cannot be broken no matter how powerful you are. That includes God... and assuming he made or put those laws in place, he cannot break the laws without being a hypocrite... there is nothing that says he has broken the laws of physics or of the universe.

What would you do if you were an infinitely more intelligent being than the life forms on another planet... it wouldnt matter how much science and math you taught them, they would simply not learn enough in one generation in order to catch up to your level... so how do you advance them? You give them something that creates social stability, cohesion and promotes an environment of working together for the greater good. For primitave beings, the easiest thing to do that is religion. After a few hundred generations they should be well on their way and reaching an age of enlightenment where they should be perfectly prepared to receive further knowledge in all aspects, including science. We are going through this period right now... so I believe that any time within the next few hundred years, mankind will come to know for sure if there is a God or not, and we will find out who he really is... I think its foolish for atheists to rule out the possibility for the existence for God, and to rule out the validity of the Bible or any other religious scripture. There are a lot of errors in the bible that can be attributed to poor or inaccurate translation, but just because there are obvious errors, doesnt mean the entire book is false. That is like hearing someone tell a lie and then assuming that everything else that comes out of their mouth is a lie... thats just foolish...

You all need to be more open minded... and yes I am a believer in Christ, and in God... but I dont blindly believe like many who then go and abandon their beliefs because they see something that they cant find an answer to immediately. I have always come across problems, or things that dont make sense.... but instead of being biased and either ignoring them or accepting it as evidence of the falsness of the whole big picture, I research, learn, study, understand, and find the truth.

I encourage all of you to stop blindly believing everything you read... starting with "God created the universe in 6 days" ... the fact is, its a mistranslation and misinterpretation... God created the earth in 6 "periods of time"

My question is why do we need to mock people that don't understand things that we do? I don't think that will help them or the world by making fun of their beliefs. All it does is help us be smug in our own beliefs. Shouldn't we be trying to help other human beings become better educated in a way that they'll accept (with compassion and understanding)?

My opinion is it doesn't matter either way. I've tried to be tactful and explain things like evolution or even the basic structure of the solar system to people who completely refuse the piles of evidence I give them. Theists have literally told me there are conspiracies in science.

Take evolution. A recent poll said 46% of Americans believe in creationism. That's over 100 million people. We have museums, hard evidence, genetic evidence, modern examples, books, videos and sciences classes explaining it all. Yet with all of that information available, people still refuse to believe it. Fuck 'em.

I just don't care anymore. I'm going to highlight their idiocy through comedy and irony. If they don't want to be the butt end of a joke, they should reconsider the joke beliefs they hold.

"I think its foolish for atheists to rule out the possibility for the existence for God, and to rule out the validity of the Bible or any other religious scripture."

Wouldn't you, being a believer in Christ and YHWH, have to disregard the validity of any other scripture seeing as The Bible is The Word Of God and to believe anything else as valid is akin to idolatry?

depends on your beliefs. Your shoe-horning people into one dogmatic system to make it easier for you to argue, but this isn't always the case. It's easy to believe that the bible is divinely inspired, without having to literally believe every word of every translation.

However, I would find it stretching credibility to say that one believes all tenants of all religions simultaneously.

I may be oversimplifying yes, but there comes a point where you are(effectively) saying "Everything I don't like in The Bible is a mistranslation"
Don't Acts 4:16 and John 14:6 , among others pretty clearly state that the only way to god is through Him and by no other name is he known. Hell, one of the commandments says exactly that.
My question is: where is the line between not believing every word of a translation and cherry picking what you want to hear out of a belief system?

That's a very difficult question. I mean, no decisions are made in a vacuum. You have to look at context. Be it either in an entirely scientific or faith based system.

I'm a scientist, so I have to address issues in a logical fashion. When looking at data, your often times presented with things that don't match. Pieces of information that don't fit the trend. Are these true "observations" of reality, or are they artifacts of your measurement system? Are these pieces of information reporting on a phenomenon that's actually occurring, or are they the result of something you don't understand, even possibly glitches in the system? Even in science these types of questions arise, and are often either confirmed or denied by the context in which the data was received. Am I using a piece of equipment with known variance? Are we getting electrical interference from some outside source? Or is this something that hasn't been observed before? There is no clear cut answer a lot of the times, but a solid background in the field helps you guide between these false positives and truly novel data results.

Similarly, I'm a christian, but I often find passages in the bible that I find troubling. Timothy 2:12 for instance talks about the silent role that women should take in leadership. Do I brooch this issue at face value or do I put it in context of Paul's overall message, which is talking about conservative approach towards authoritative roles in the wake of Jesus' revolution. I don't find women leadership to be a bad thing, but here is this verse in the bible. Do I change my viewpoint? Do I think that maybe I have misunderstood the passage? Should I be looking at it in a broader context, for instance Paul preaching conservative tenants in regards to the view of authority figures in the wake of Jesus' revolution. In this case, is he saying that women shouldn't be leaders for now, and maybe could be later? I don't really have an answer. But I know that context, just as it helps me interpret scientific data, helps me interpret my understand of the bible.

So, yes it may be cherry picking, but it could also be looked at as trying to gain a broader understanding of the subject. Yes, it would be extreme to say that there is no need for a central God as a tenant, but at the same time, it really depends on what context your coming from.

I understand your sentiment but I find it incredibly silly.
If one is going to put themselves into the dogmatic category of "Christian" there are certain things which must be allowed to be assumed. That is why religion exists.
To say that belief is so variable and fluid completely contradicts the tenants of the religion you are trying to follow. This makes you , decidedly, not label.
You could say: I incorporate some christian doctrine into my spirituality OR I like to believe that the Bible gives very sound advice on how we should live our lives.
But, it ain't Christianity, if you believe other religions can be also correct or go against very specific core tenants.

In principle I agree with your interpretation of things but, in the same light, I think it is detrimental for you to argue for being a Christian even though you obviously are totally cool with the rest of the world doing their thing. You cna give yourself whatever label you want but, at the end of the day, you are diluting the label and ascribing to some set of beliefs that only mirrors your own on the surface.

Also, didn't god get really pissy about people like you. Something about "The lukewarm shall be spat from my mouth"?

e: I am an engineer and mislabeling makes me angry. If I were a scientist trying to categorize you, I wouldn't put you in the same category as Christian. You have pretty glaring differences.

If I were a scientist trying to categorize you, I wouldn't put you in the same category as Christian. You have pretty glaring differences.

Have you considered this may be because your conception of Christianity is flawed? Honestly, I don't see his approach anything like "cherry-picking". He is acknowledging an unavoidably imperfect understanding of scripture and God. This notion of "all or nothing" about Christianity is one of the most pervasive on r/atheism and one of the most nonsensical.

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding about what I'm saying.

There is a distinction to be made between what I believe myself, and what I'm willing to defend as a belief system.

I personally believe in one true God, I believe in Jesus Christ as our lord and savior. I am a Presbyterian, and subscribe to the tenants of a protestant faith. However, I am human, and therefore flawed. I lack a perfect understanding of life, and the universe and therefore have to depend on context and faith to guide me. There is nothing lukewarm about my personal belief system.

At the same time, there is a distinction to be made about what I will consider a defensible situation for other people. I don't know the context that other people come from. As mentioned above, I am fundamentally flawed in my understanding. As a result, I am not in a position to judge whether or not someone is or is not a Christian. I lack that authority. Sure there are some tenants which I think are fundamental to the religion, such as Jesus Christ as a savior, and one true God. At the same time, can I argue that there is no context that someone could come from to interpret this differently? Again I lack the insight necessary to make this judgement.

Additionally, I am only referring to how I should conduct myself with other people. Truth, is TRUTH. It is what actually exists, and is happening. In no way do I think that belief in a system alters the actually reality of the world. In this regard I don't think that every belief system is "ok", in that one should reflect the TRUTH of the world, while others would obviously lack the same validity. However, I also know that Christianity is a faith based system. There is no formal logic to proving the existence of God. As a result, any logical argument I raise about his existence is fundamentally unprovable (and would be arguably diminutive of the religion even if this was in the affirmative). Therefore there is no logical method for me to prove to another individual my personal belief system. Knowing this to be true about my religion, how then can I judge the tenants of anther's belief? While I can certainly decry any beliefs which exhibit glaring logical falsies, I have just stated that any logical construct such as these are destined to fail under any serious scrutiny. In this light, I say that I lack the fundamental knowledge required to make such a judgement call and instead depend on the context of the situation to make my decisions.

I'm sorry that you don't consider me a Christian and you think it does dishonor to the label, but if your stuck with the fundamental extremists, your also stuck with me. We might not like all of our relatives, but were all still one big family.

That's all well and good, but why do so many fundamental churches teach 6 days, and why do my friends belong to these churches and when I tell them this (6 periods of time) do they view it as an attack on their faith?

Most of us don't rule out the existence of your God. We just want some actual evidence that he exists over the thousands of other gods that people believed/still believe in as fully as you do in yours.

As for your six periods of time justification so that you can believe what you want to believe, there is zero evidence for that and the periods of time set forth in the bible as days do not match what actually happened.

Right. That solves nothing. In fact it makes it worse. Because in the Biblical narrative, God creates plants in a period before he creates the sun. So, now, you have plants living on the earth for one of these 'periods' that is longer than 24 hours and somehow living without the sun. That's freakin' genius. What a way to try and retrofit an obviously mythological creation story. Please read Robert Ingersoll's "Some Mistakes of Moses" (it's public domain, you won't have to pay for it). I guarantee that after you read it you'll realize that the entire Pentateuch is stone/bronze age mythology written by people who didn't have benefit of science and so they knew nothing about makeup and origins of the world they were experiencing. Nothing in the Pentateuch is the inspired words of god (if god exists) being revealed to mankind.

Thanks for the reference. I will Definitely check it out! I mentioned in a post below about the book of Moses or "a" book of Moses discovered around 1830 written on papyrus. It was translated at the time, and the order of the creation was slightly different than in the bible. it actually has the order right. It isn't mainstream Christianity, it is believed by many to be a correct translation. But it does make you wonder why the bible is a little off. Is it possible for any kind of primitive plant life to exist without sunlight or in low light? I don't know. But I will have a closer look at what you refer to and see what I can find.

The universe came from nothing... Math has shown us that... What if there is some kind of existence beyond the universe? Almost like if you were a computer programmer looking at words on a screen, the words can't see far in front or behind, but can figure out the laws they are bound by, but the programmer can see it all at once and change it as desired... This isn't my belief but it is one theory... The laws of physics and math only apply to this universe, if you exist outside the universe then it is possible that the same laws don't apply to you.
But genesis refers to the creation of our solar system, not the universe.
It's hard, but you can't close your mind off to the realm of possibilities. As soon as you stop thinking of possibilities you get stuck and become no different from the millions of Christians who refuse to listen to science and reason... You'll just be at the other end of the stick...

smart guy right here! these stupid religions upset me. when you teach your kids at a developing stage of their lives that "This is the way it is" it boxes in their minds. the scary part is the multitude of people that follow such rubbish!! for all we know, our known universe could be a single atom in the asshair of some other being

Doesn't it say "and there was evening, and there was morning - the third day"? So on the third day it gets more specific... that doesn't sound like just any period of time. And then the next day he creates the sun and moon (which I'd have thought were necessary to have an evening and a morning) and the story continues using evening and morning as markers as he creates the living creatures and man in the following two days.

At the very least you have to admit it reads like a confused mess - even in the original tongue. So either it was written by some simple early folks as a fable about the origin of the world (my interpretation), or God and his most inspired writers and translators are simply terrible at communicating.

It's just pointless to try to find a relationship between period of times and days.

Scholars are sometimes matching parts of the bible to events that could have naturally occurred, but the rest should be seen as part of the legend. A nice story which only purpose it to send a message, like Icarus flying too close to the sun and falling in the sea or any other legend in any other culture.

Let's just consider that in the Bible, God created the world in 6 days.** It does not matter**, it's the legend, who cares

It's as silly to take everything in the bible literally as discussing the fact that, duh, the universe isn't 6000 years old or that Methuselah's age was in fact moon cycles.

Or.. It's all bullshit and just a method of controlling people meanwhile science is discovering the truth and the people in denial are trying to make it fit with their beliefs so they don't feel stupid for believing it for so long.

Why would you have to defend this posts, exactly? This is R/atheism, the topic is perfectly fine under the guidelines of R/atheism. It was voted to the front page so clearly the community found it interesting.

actually the universe was made 6 minutes ago, but made to look like a lot of things happened leading up to now. he's clever that way...insanely clever. (source: god told me 5 minutes ago that the universe was 1 minute old..i wish he had given me funner memories but oh well)

Now the problem with this is that only a very very small fraction of you actually understand the observations/experiments that lead up to this understanding about the universe, yet you tote it around with as a fanatical belief as any "religious fanatic" would, more over you do it with a pride that suggests that you yourself discovered it.

I can almost guarantee you that this number will change. If you understand the scientific process, then you'll understand that this number isn't a hard and fast "fact" but a best estimate we have now. Someone down the road will make some fundamental observation about that density of bosons in higgs field and realize it's implications towards our age of the universe (this of course isn't actually what will lead to this shift, but you get the point), and we'll have some subtle shift in the number. However, in spite of this, the graph seems to claim some victory with it's own flawed vision of "superior" knowledge. when in reality it's the same sort of blind faith in another institution, for all of those but the most informed.

I'm a scientist, but when I see posts like this, I don't rejoice at the wonders of scientific achievement that have lead us to these discoveries, but am instead remorseful for the ignorance of the masses.

Actually, current theories state that all the matter/anti-matter/energy that would EVER exist in the Universe was created in less than a millisecond. But it's never about actual "science" with Online Atheists. It's about being the biggest douchebag possible.

Interesting fact about the expanding universe- since its temperature has been slowly declining ever since the Big Bang, there was a point in time when the void of space was room temperature. I wish I could remember where I read that- I'm thinking it might have been The Elegant Universe, but I'm not sure.

No offense, but that is a silly graphic if you are trying to debate religious nuts.

Its too complex for most of those folks to understand what any of that means, and they can simply fall back on the "yeah, well god just made it look old to fool you atheists" or something along those lines.

When are people going to realize that you can not debate religion with logic and knowledge? It doesn't work because they already believe in something so illogical that throwing facts and figures at them doesn't do anything. Just by believing in some imaginary deity, they have proven that they are illogical, gullible people.

All the duplicated stories come from the Book of the Dead . Horus the sun god, who was the actual sun itself personified into characters . The sun recedes for three days and then rises again on the crux star constellation. The sun gave us life and abundance and people were grateful and worshipped the sun. Age is from the word Aeon and was a measurement of time kept track of by the astrological zodiac . 12 houses in the zodiac, 12 months in a year. and Aeon (AGE) lasts for over a hundred years and then a new AGE begins.

Just as they depicted the zodiac signs by personifying them with a Ram for the Aries and so on, They also did the same with the Sun. Being that the Sun is the source of our existence , it would only be fitting to make that personification an immaculate son , and on the same evening as the 3 kings ( 3 stars) point to the actual sun on Dec. 25th) It is a story to teach about the suns motions on that date.

If you put GOD into the equation then nothing really matters as any type of arguments can be made to suit one's opinion. So when anyone uses God for any type of argument I just ignore them as there is no point in debating.

while I completly agree with the universe not being created in six days, I can't help but feel this argument is invalid because nobody really knows if this is actually the way the universe was created and it seems that you believe in something that's just as unscientifically proven as god himself.

If God is all powerful and infinite, why did it take six days (by any scale) to get the job done and why the day of rest? Why the need to rest when nothing can tire you by your own definition of your state of existence?

Exactly. A better way to convince people would be a "explain me like I'm five" short tutorial on what scientists discovered about the formation of the universe in the past century. Red shift measurement, nice Hubble pictures, cosmic background radiations.

I have to admit... there are holes in my statement if pushed to it's logical ends.

If we take the Bible as a work of fiction, meaning all characters and objects are fictional, including Earth, it is entirely appropriate to say "God created the Earth," because the creation is taking place in a fictional arena.

A parallel illustration can be the "Han shot first" debate in the Star Wars fan world. Everything in the Star Wars universe if fictional. So it would be incorrect for me to say "Han did not shoot first, because there is no Han, so therefore he couldn't have shot Greedo." Since all things are fictional, then the conversation would be under the assumption that we allow ourselves to believe the fiction as tangible, and then conclude that Han, indeed, shot Greedo.

I'll leave the discussion of who shot first to history.

So, in conclusion, it is technically wrong of me to say "God does not exist so he could not have created the Earth" because we would be talking about a work of fiction and allow all hypothetical discussion to exist within that context.

A number of people are saying that creationists get around this by saying that God could create stars/galaxies, etc. at any point in their existence. While this is an assumption they could make, I have a thought experiment that makes this statement even more ridiculous:

Imagine that tomorrow, we observe a supernova in nebula calculated to be 5 million light years distant. this was a normal star we observed for 1,000 years, until tomorrow its albedo flares, and we see it explode. From this observable fact there are three possibilities:

1) 5 million years ago, a star exploded and we are just now receiving the light, as we understand the nature of light speed, time, and distance calculations (understandings which are pretty much proven by complex mathematical proofs)

2) somehow, our calculations are way off and this star is not where we think it is - we are somehow scientifically wrong about this understanding (light speed is variable, gravitational lensing, whatever)

3) 6-10,000 years ago, at the creation of the universe, when God placed the sun and stars in the sky, he also created stars in the process of going supernova (not to mention what looks like remnants of supernovas and other dead stars). But since he create this star 5 million light years away from earth, there's no way we could ever know of its existence until humans have been around for 5 million years. So, to fix this, he somehow moved the light at WARP SPEED so that it instantly made it 99% of the way to earth - but not the whole way - just so that in 9,546 years in the future the Hubble telescope suddenly sees this light flare in the sky.

Which of these options is more likely? While option #3 is I guess conceivable, it is certainly not biblical and is an assumption of fancy that it pretty ludicrous as a way of explaining the event. I don't see how any young earth creationist could get past it:

Light begins at a finite point. Say we are observing the star as normal for years, when suddenly it goes supernova. For young earth creationism to be true, it would have had to take at MAXIMUM 8,000 years for that light to travel 5 million light years. That’s if the supernova started on the day of creation. Which is a paradox, since we’ve been observing the light from the star for the last thousand years. Which means we were observing light emanated before the star even existed. So the only way at all that the young earthers have a way out is to insist, beyond all reason and evidence, that physics is totally wrong in how they calculate star distance. It’s possible, but not probable, given the proofs presented.

TL; DR: for young earth creationism to be true, either stars are not as far away as we think, or stars would have to have existed before God created them, which is impossible even for a believer.

The creation myth follows the same order of events as evolution and genesis has been widely misinterpreted.

First, the word "day" is actually translated as "yom" which refers to anything from a 24-hour period (day) to an undefined period of time (age), much like the phrase "back in my day" refers to a time period rather than a day.

Next, many people mistakenly think Earth was created first in Gen 1:1 when it says "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," but this is merely an introductory statement summarizing the creation story to follow. Here is a quick list of interpretations of the events described:

Day 1: Light appears; divided from the darkness (Big Bang); Day 2: "Waters above" divide from the "waters below" (gases separate/condense, stars/galaxies form; our sun); Day 3: waters gathered together and dry land appears (planets form; earth); Day 4: the moon is formed, helping to mark what is day and night (on earth); Day 5: animals form in the sea (fish) and then the air (flying insects); Day 6: animals form on land (mammals, livestock, reptiles, birds, humans); Day 7: life continues

I wish this could be further up. You give an excellent explanation of how one can believe what the Bible says and also believe in the Big Bang Theory. This is one of the first times I've seen it broken down so well. Thanks!

either stars are not as far away as we think, or stars would have to have existed before God created them

Or, God made the light extend to the observers on Earth at the time of creation. I mean, after all, what's the point of making stars if His creatures will not be able to appreciate them for several million years?

That doesn't work in my example case though. If we observe a supernova tomorrow in a star that is 5 million LY distant, then that light was NOT extended to earth at the time of creation, rather only part way, since even creationists agree that everything has been around for at least 6,000 years. and if this is a star we had been observing as normal up to that point for a thousand years (say, some medieval scientist first noted it), and it goes supernova tomorrow, that means at the very least that at creation, there was 1,000 years of normal light before the supernova. It then follows that the supernova light would have to travel the 4,999,000 LY distance 1,000 years after creation. OR - there was 1,000 years of normal starlight before the creation of the universe, and the supernova happened on the day of creation, warped to us tomorrow, and...I don't even know. it makes no sense.
TL;DR: simple arithmetic and observation check-mates creationism.

And I can tell you that my suggestion DOES work in this given example... Because when presented mathematical proof of something, a creationists only needs to reply with "all things are possible through God."

I think the idea of us being "his creatures" is a little off... The fact is, NONE OF US UNDERSTAND this, and we probably never will. Thats cool though because it lets us imagine and guess. We tend to thing of us being his creations like a kid playing with an ant farm or sea monkeys. Or like Lisa's petri dish and benders little people. I think it may be something more, something that we cant comprehend, not a reason, possession, experiment, or otherwise. Just my 2 pesos.

I never truely understood until that graffic that if the universe was created in 1 giant explosion/event then it was to have a center. So does that mean the edges of the universe are roughly even? Are we living in a giant orb that keeps expanding? Like a fish bowl. Well fish bowl do not expand obviously......

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you have a decent grasp on spatial relationships you can not be a creationist. Scale is what eludes the uncritical mind. If you use a cell phone, watch TV or fly in plane you are depending on electronics, these work because we know the speed of light and when you look in the sky those stars are suns if the creation was less than 6000 years old all of those suns would have to be with in 6000 light years, if all the stars in the visible to the naked eye were within 6000 light years of us we would be on fire right now. Are you on fire?

And yet modern theories of the Big Bang state that only H, He, Li, and Be were formed out of the Big Bang, and that elements up to Fe shouldn't appear until after galaxies have formed and stars have been burned out. Yet the youngest galaxies we have observed (<2b years old) show that there are high quantities of heavy elements, even those heavier than Fe. In fact, the amounts of these elements is higher than that of our own Sun. So, is it possible the Big Bang wasn't the beginning? I propose that the Big Bang is actually the event horizon for a big slug of matter spun off from a super-super-massive black hole that occurred around 13.7b years ago. So much material came off at that one point in time/space that they didn't form into nuclei for minutes later. Furthermore, more matter continues to be ejected, "appearing" in our universe as heavy elements in the first 2b years after the Big Bang. Finally, the side effects of all of this material being flung into "our" universe creates what we observe as "dark matter", forcing our universe to grow at an accelerating rate. I can go on, as this crackpot hypothesis also accounts for a number of other oddities we see in our physical universe. But, alas, it is nothing more than a crackpot hypothesis.